No! Not a hexadecimal comparison. If it were, 11 would compare higher than AA at least in an EBCDIC environment.
Hexadecimal is not a format or type of data. It is a way of representing data that works well for communication among humans. What does some particular word in memory contain? One way of expressing the answer is 'ABCD'. Another way of expressing the answer is -1044200508. Inside the computer memory it is something more like 11000001110000101100001111000100 but that is very clumsy for human communication. Probably the clearest way of expressing it to humans is in hex, C1C2C3C4. FWIW, an equally unambiguous and potentially more compact way is Base64, wcLDxA== Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Dave Clark Sent: Wednesday, June 7, 2023 10:27 AM To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Shower thought "IBM Mainframe Assembler List" <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote on 06/07/2023 01:22:23 PM: > So where does this "Logical" come from? I'm sure it's something obvious! It is a character (hexadecimal) comparison vs. a numeric (binary/packed) comparison.